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webshit weekly

An annotated digest of the top "Hacker" "News" posts for the third week of July, 2017.

Apache Foundation disallows use of the Facebook “BSD+Patent” licenseJuly 15, 2017(comments)
Some bureaucrats make boring decisions about meaningless garbage. Hackernews feels vindicated, and celebrates by rehashing ancient tribal lore. The arguments start with "misunderstanding the terms of the document" and move through "misunderstanding the terms of all documents" before settling on "zero-knowledge declaration of best practices." Nothing useful is even brought up, much less discussed.

Employees Who Stay in Companies Longer Than Two Years Get Paid 50% LessJuly 16, 2017(comments)
An internet posts to Forbes to link to Twitter. Hackernews argues about whether it's better to work at a place where you have to treat your management team like a debt collector or whether it's better to just start out rich. Every single comment is replied to with "well that's not the norm," followed by an anecdote the responder insists is the actual norm.

The Limitations of Deep LearningJuly 17, 2017(comments)
An internet mentions that current "deep" "learning" tactics maybe aren't perfect. Hackernews is comfortable with the fact that the class of computing they refer to as "deep learning" has nothing to do with learning and the only "depth" is the pile of bullshit they proceed to spew about how the real problem is pretending computers are people. Some time is spent replacing existing misconceptions with new, more dangerous misconceptions. Everyone agrees that the solution is more abstraction, and all current problems are the fault of those lazy assholes over in the biology sector.

The Myth of Drug Expiration DatesJuly 18, 2017(comments)
Big Pharma continues the war against its own users. Hackernews is sorry that people are needlessly dying, but it just costs too much money to know things. Better luck next time!

153k Ether Stolen in Parity Multi-Sig AttackJuly 19, 2017(comments)
Bitcoin Idiots, LLC watches another batch of feckless morons get their toys stolen. Hackernews sagely gathers around the campfire to explain that Bitcoin Idiots, LLC committed a cardinal sin: programming computers without asking Mozilla how to do it right. Hackernews can't figure out how any of the affected parties can continue living after having lost so much money, never stopping to notice that there was no money at all involved.

Scientists Reverse Brain Damage in Drowned Toddler?July 20, 2017(comments)
An internet posts a tabloid story about a medical case. Hackernews (all of whom are neurologists) bikesheds the tabloid. The rest of the comments are people translating everything into computer analogies for the readers unwilling to pretend they have medical degrees.

Pass: A standard Unix password managerJuly 21, 2017(comments)
An internet makes a bash script to encrypt things. Hackernews dives into a multi-hour argument about how to make files appear in two places at once. Once someone notices this particular program exposes metadata and isn't generally as useful as real password managers, the floodgates of self-promotion open as every single Hackernews links to the github url of every home-built password manager ever made.